Benedict Option 3: Should Christians Opt Out of Public Education?

The chapter in The Benedict Option on education ("Education as Christian Formation") is certain to elicit negative reaction. Indeed, at times it almost seems calibrated to do so. Dreher is here inclined to make absolutizing statements that alienate an audience. 

Here is one: "Because public education in America is neither rightly ordered, nor religiously informed, nor able to form an imagination devoted to Western civilization, it is time for all Christians to pull their children out of the public school system." Apparently you can take your nuance and shove it. And I say this is as one who does not necessarily disagree with Dreher on this point. We, personally, have chosen to opt out of the very good public school system in our neighborhood in favor of home education. I think that most public schools in our country are a flaming pile of garbage. However, I do not think we are at the place where all Christians everywhere need to abandon the system. Indeed, given that 40% of public school teachers are Christian and that your tax money is being funneled into these institutions whether you like it or not, such a wholesale abandonment does not seem to be in the spirit of charity or integrity. Also, I don't know that the notion that the public school system is somehow unredeemable is proven. Dreher is unfortunately data-deficient in this chapter. Such a total claim requires more than anecdote for justification.

But maybe such an absolutist claim is required to drive an audience to think. Here are some questions I am asking: 

• What are the teleological values of the public school system and do they conform to the faith I am trying to form within my children? And, maybe as importantly, do we even know?
• What is the nature of the influence of peers and the social values of the school on children? How do you measure such a thing? Formation is a long-term game; not something as simple as whether or not they are smoking behind the gym.
• Can you count on the few hours you get with them in the evening to act as an antidote to the secularizing impulse of public education? 
• Are they actually learning anything in that building worthwhile or is this more functionally a daycare facility than a place of education? This is a big question.
• Are kids really cut out to be mini-evangelists in the walls of their schools?

These are all questions we ought to ask. They are questions I struggle to answer in the public school system as it currently stands. So, I am going to lay out what I think on the issue with some Dreher sprinkled in.

In an earlier post on the book I noted that Dreher feels strongly that strict media avoidance is a two-pronged need: one, for content; the other for the dependence it provokes. I think the same principle applies to education. It is not merely the content of the public educational system that I object to (though I do object in large measure to the sequencing--kids love facts and memorization, but we run away from this--and basic utilitarianism of the whole endeavor--gotta compete with China! STEM, STEM, STEM), but the sort of dependence on government institutions and the farming out of education to the caprice of the government that is implicit in the system.

Still, I think this decision ought to be left to the judgment of discerning parents. And we ought to be free to disagree, and maybe we should try to do that with charity. Parents don't enroll their kids in Christian schools because they don't care about the lost; parents don't enroll their kids in public schools because they don't care about the spiritual formation of their children.

But I will say something in response to one of the critiques of Christian schools and homeschooling that I have heard in the past that Dreher addresses here: Some critics of home/private schooling say that it is necessary for Christian students to be embedded within these schools to act as salt and light. Here is Dreher's response:

As popular culture continues its downward slide, however, this rationale begins to sound like rationalization. It brings to mind a father who tosses his child into a whitewater river in hopes that she'll save another drowning child.

Your mileage may vary on the chosen metaphor, but I think his point is basically this: the system is so inimical to our values as believers we can hardly expect our kids to do more than simply survive the onslaught they face within that system. To expect them to subsequently act as church bait is naive. Especially given the poor job the church in general does at equipping young believers and training them in the faith. There are ways of having the same endgame of outreach, putting your children in sports or arts programs, that allow the level of meaningful interaction with peers and help you get to know other parents that don't involve giving your children over to the government for 40 hours per week.

In a following post on the same chapter I will address the issues confronting Christian schools.